


Masquerade

by Fairfaxleasee



Category: Andromeda Six (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autism Spectrum, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27307048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairfaxleasee/pseuds/Fairfaxleasee
Summary: Vexx reflects on his relationship with Traveler before deciding to invite her to the Masque.
Relationships: Vexx Serif/Traveler
Kudos: 10





	Masquerade

Vexx could hear the angry, discordant notes of metalcore seeping out from under Cassandra’s door as he approached it in the hallway. Her rooms were technically in the royal wing, although they were the only routinely occupied ones in a hall that typically only served for servant access. He remembered asking when he first joined the guard why her rooms were so far from anyone else’s; it might have made sense when all her siblings still lived there but he hadn’t understood why she had been pushed aside when it would have been safer for her and easier for the guard to have her less isolated.

“Yeah, like any assassin’s going to bother about that one. Waste of time for whoever’d do it and waste of money for whoever’d pay for it.”

That had, of course, been the point. No one wanted to bother about ‘that one.’

_ Just keep walking. I have what I need, I should just keep walking. Things will be harder for both of us if I don’t just keep walking. _

But she didn’t actually enjoy anything harder than electronicore. Granted, the music wasn’t out of place in some of the games she played or vids she watched, and she had recently taken to trying to make it seem like she was in a particular place so that no one would be looking for her when she was anywhere else as part of her ongoing efforts to avoid...practically everyone but him, but she could also be using the music to try and refocus her pain. He could still hear the nihilistic rationalization she had given the first time a bandage had fallen off and he had seen the scars, and the wounds on their way to becoming scars.

“Vexx, I can’t make the pain stop. But if I make it so it’s because of something I did and not something that was done to me it gets easier. Is that really so hard to understand?”

He hadn’t been able to come up with a good response to that. She had, at least, stopped physically hurting herself. The scars were getting harder to hide and the previous week at a dinner she had bled on one of her dresses and her father had found out. Vexx doubted King Fenris ever even looked at what his youngest daughter was wearing, let along long enough long enough to notice a stain, but someone had pointed it out to him. Probably the Solar Queen. Lucrezia was never one to miss when someone was failing to meet her exacting standards and she took particular relish when that someone was Cass. The immediate results had been shockingly predictable, her father ‘explaining’ just how ‘unacceptable’ Cass was being and how she was, one way or another, going to learn to be right. The only thing Cass had learned was not to leave any evidence.

_ I’ll just check on her. I’m a guard, it makes sense that I’m checking on her. _

He didn’t have to worry about the door being locked. Cass’s door could only lock from the outside. Terrible for security, but great for its intended purpose of making sure she was fully aware that she lacked any personal autonomy. Her rooms weren’t a refuge where she could get away from the world, they were a cell where she could be locked away for everyone else’s convenience.

If this was her new way to try and blunt the pain, he could just turn the music off. If she was still present enough to notice him, she’d probably be mad, but he couldn’t care if she was mad. She would be madder at him soon enough anyway, at least while she could still be mad.

If she just had a vid or a game on too loud and she noticed him, all he would need to do is let her know, warn her to turn it down; he could make some excuse to leave. Maybe she wouldn’t notice him at all, she could get pretty absorbed in those sometimes.

He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she wasn’t there. He doubted she would actually leave the palace without him. She’d heard people talking when they had been out, had a pretty good idea of what could happen if someone recognized her and decided to take out their frustrations at her father on her. He could just assume she was hiding in the passageways somewhere, if she was he wasn’t going to be able to find her if she didn’t want to let herself be found. It would be another opportunity to not entangle himself further with her. That he knew he wouldn’t take. Besides, if she was using the music as a feint he should be the one to find her, after all she had gotten the idea to misdirect like that from him. Well, not exactly. She had gotten the idea from some story about one of the ancient detectives she was obsessed with, something about an empty house, but he had been the driving force behind the need for the ruse. It had been another time he could have just kept walking and didn’t.

Once she decided she trusted him and they had established a rapport, she had been more than willing to show him all the secret passages around the palace she knew about. He had been surprised at just how many that was. He figured she would be able to show him a few and he could then work to recoinater the rest of the network later, but she probably knew more of the internal passages than almost anyone else in the palace. The rest of the royal family never used them and her favorite place to be was anywhere they weren’t. She wasn’t, strictly speaking, forbidden from being in the passages so she wasn’t worried about being caught in them. 

They would meet in the passages. Nothing that should have been considered clandestine, perhaps slightly unprofessional for a guard to be so informal with one of the royals, but she had wanted to meet there because she felt safe enough to actually be herself there without constantly looking over her shoulder afraid of who might be listening, safe enough to be willing to have conversations she wouldn’t anywhere else. He thought she would feel safe enough to take a bigger risk. He had tried to coax her to leave the palace in passing a few times, but she never seemed too keen on the idea. She was unequivocally forbidden from being outside the palace, and being caught doing something she knew she wasn’t supposed to do always worried her, particularly when it was something she didn’t particularly want to do. Vexx had made a serious mistake with her when he had tried to tease her into going out.

“Now Princess, how can you say you don’t want to go out there when you don’t even know what’s out there.”

“I do know what’s out there. The exact same people who can’t stand me as are in here.”

“Your father-”

“Seriously Vexx? You fucking think my father is the only one in here who hates me? I’m not a total idiot, Vexx, EVERYONE in here hates me. I have no idea why, but I know they do, I’m not THAT fucking stupid. What I am, unfortunately, is too stupid to figure out exactly what the hell it is I’m doing so wrong that everyone hates me, so if they’re just going to hate me out there just as much as they do in here, why the hell should I put the fucking effort into leaving?”

He hadn’t had a good response to that either. She had been exaggerating about everyone hating her, but not by much. There was a contingent of the staff that had no particular opinion about her one way or another. She kept to herself, didn’t ask for much, didn’t do anything to make their lives or jobs harder, which they appreciated but none of them had any personal investment in her. A few of the older servants who had been around since she was younger had a kind of unsympathetic pity for her.

“Poor thing. But she's always been odd, even as a child. It’s been difficult for everyone.”

But the people who had an opinion on her did overwhelmingly hate her. He didn’t think he had ever heard anyone refer to her by name unless they thought Nerissa might overhear. Aside from ‘poor thing’ and ‘that one,’ the politer names for her were ‘total headcase’ and ‘frigid bitch.’ It was possible there were other people who actually liked her. People who, like him, just didn’t like her enough to actually defend her.

_ If I didn’t have to make sure not to draw too much attention would I defend her? _

He liked to think so, but he wasn’t sure he trusted himself that much. The closest he had gotten was referring to her as “the youngest.” It had gained some traction, particularly among the apathetic, but he almost regretted it because he could hear it being substituted in for what people really wanted to say when they thought someone who might not like them saying what they meant would overhear.

The king could not care less what people thought of Cassandra, he made no secret of his personal loathing for her, but he did care about people being “appropriately respectful” of him, and most of the really popular ways of referring to Cass weren’t that.

He could have  _ should have _ just left her alone after she told him why she didn't want to go. She’d have written him off as just another person who didn’t understand her. It wouldn’t have hurt any more than it had done with any of the other people she vaguely spoke of occasionally. He didn’t  _ need _ her to show him how to get out of the palace.

_ Didn’t actually need to use her to show me the passages in the first place. Didn’t actually stop me then either. _

But for some reason Vexx just couldn’t stand her thinking he hadn’t understood. To be fair, he didn’t think he understood her that well, but he wanted to, tried to. He wasn’t necessarily good at it, he couldn’t keep straight a lot of the things she really liked, but he still liked her. He knew she was probably going to hate him by the end of this, she should hate him by the end of this, but that would at least be for something he did deliberately, not because he’d screwed up and taken his teasing too far. So he decided to make it up to her.

_ While I was still using her. _

Most of the things Cass was really passionate about were fairly niche. Several of them, like that detective and the space thing with the light sticks, had had their day, but these days weren’t them and the things that were in these days just didn’t resonate with her enough for her to want to risk venturing out. But this was Goldis, and fortunately there were a lot of people who wanted to buy taste. It took some effort, but not a particularly long time, for him to find something he hoped would be worth the risk to her.

It took about the same amount of effort but considerably more time for her to agree to hear him out. He had expected her to be annoyed when he asked her to meet him back in the passages. He knew he had hurt her there last time and that she didn’t like giving people a chance to hurt her more than once when she had a meaningful choice about it. But he also knew he was important to her, even as he knew he really shouldn’t be. She had only agreed to meet when he reminded her that if she wanted to, she could lose him in the passages. 

She had been there when he arrived. He had been early and something told him that if he hadn’t managed to make it on time he wouldn’t have seen her again. And that would have been...unthinkable. He knew that he wouldn’t see her again soon enough anyway. The plans that were in motion, that he helped put in motion, that he was still helping, were bigger than either of them and were reaching their final stages. But he wanted to at least be able to see her while he could. She hadn’t needed to say anything initially. He knew the explanation needed to be good. He just hoped it was.

He reached into his coat and handed her the flyer for something he thought might be worth going out to her. She snatched it out of his hand and glared at him for a few seconds before looking at it.

“ _ Richard III _ ?”

“You like the author, right?”

“Playwright. Authors write books, Shakespeare wrote plays.”

If she had been in a better mood and he hadn’t been on such thin ice he would have challenged this, but she hadn’t been trying to pick a fight, she just liked being accurate. Even if the accuracy was irrelevant.

“Do you want to see it or not?”

“Like as a general preference for an experience that may be enjoyable? What are the alternatives?”

“I...look, Cass, I went too far, I get it. I’m sorry, I’m just...trying to make it up to you.”

“So, you’re trying to make up for going too far making me go outside by trying to get me to go outside?”

“I’m not…”

She threw one of her more merciless looks at that.

“Okay, fine, yes, I’m still trying to get you to go outside, but that’s because there are things outside that aren’t terrible. There are places you can be that won’t hurt.”

“...that’s worse.”

“How?”

“If everywhere is just as bad as here, then it doesn’t matter that I’m here because it’s all the same. But if there are places that don’t hurt, and I have to come back here, then being here will be worse than it already is.”

“Cass…”

He reached for her and she jumped back. He wasn’t sure quite why she was so averse to being touched. He had seen Lucrezia hit her once when she really lost her temper at Cass, but only once. It didn’t seem to be a regular occurrence and she had hated being touched just as much before as after. He had to admit, being so unable to comfort her like this was incredibly frustrating, maybe even enough to make a lot of people give up.

_ But it’s not like she asked for any of this. And she’s not having any fun with it either. _

He could have stopped then too. Just apologized, promised to never bring it up again, found his own entrances and exits. She probably would have been fine with that. Things might have gone back to the way they were before. But even if they did, the way they were was just so...bleak. She had found a way to survive them but she was still so clearly miserable.

_ She should be able to be happy, even if it’s only for a little while. _

He ran his hand through his hair. Then he exhaled and tried again.

_ She doesn’t respond to emotions. It needs to be rational. I need to make her see the logic. _

“Cass, do you like the way things are now?”

“I mean, I can deal with them.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She turned her head away and stared at an empty point in the passage for several seconds.

“...no. No, I don’t.”

She faced him again but her eyes didn’t follow. She kept starting to bring them to meet his but they would always dart back to the empty point before she got them there. She was clearly trying though, and the effort was just as clearly costing her.

“Then why not try to find something that could help?”

“Why would this help?”

“Do you remember what you told me about the pain not going away?”

He hoped this would be a rhetorical question. Cass’s memory, like many things about her, was something of a paradox. The things she did remember, she recalled with photographic precision. The things she didn’t, she tried to keep locked away. She was mostly successful, but every so often something would slip through the mental barriers she had up. And even when the events were safely locked away, the scars they had left on her mind remained. And he didn’t want to be another thing she tried to lock away, even if he knew he should be.

She pressed her lips between her teeth, closed her eyes, and nodded. Her not giving a verbal response was disconcerting but not unexpected. He reminded himself that the important thing was that she was still responsive at all.

“Cass, I know this isn’t going to be able to make the pain go away. I don’t have a way to make the pain go away.”

She slid one of her fingers across her throat. The thought of her own death never seemed to bother Cass the way it did most people, it was just something, like so many other things, she had accepted as inevitable and learned to live with. This wasn’t the first time she had brought up her own death as a way to finally be rid of the pain, but he didn’t think she would deliberately seek to cause it. She took a pyrrhic comfort in the fact that as painful as it was to keep going, she still found it preferable to ending things. Also Vexx wasn’t in any position to lecture someone about seeking her death.

“Fine. I don’t have a good way to make the pain go away. But you could leave it behind. For a little while, have a break from it.”

She was opening and closing her hand in front of her mouth, flicking her wrist down and away from it when she had all her fingers extended only to gather them together and start the movement over again. She obviously wanted to communicate something but still wasn’t able to get any words out. He had wanted to show he could understand her. This was his chance.

“You want to say something?”

She shook her head and started pointing back over her shoulder.

“You said something.”

She nodded once. Vexx wished he could have just asked her to remind him what it was she had said, but if she had been capable of doing that she would have by now. Instead he racked his brain to remember what she had said. He needed to keep her in the conversation, it had begun going off-track when he had reached for her, and he had reached for because...she said that knowing she could be away from the pain would make it worse when she couldn’t.

“Cass, when...what you do to distract yourself wears off, is the pain worse than it was?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“But it helps you be able to deal with it?”

Her eyes stayed shut as she nodded.

“Getting out, getting away from it, just for a little, can you please try and see if that could work too? You’re not going to always be stuck here…”

“I’m not?”

He barely heard that. He still wasn’t sure if she had actually said the words or just mouthed them. He stopped to let her continue.

“I’m not...always stuck here? Here...ends, but not everything?”

Her eyes started moving, the longer they moved the faster they went. She had somehow honestly never considered that her father’s reach was finite, that she could be free of it. But she was considering it now, and she was intrigued by the possibilities.

“If I don’t like it there, we can leave?”

“Yes.”

“And...we don’t have to go back?”

“No.”

He meant that. He might have difficulty pulling himself away from her, but if she left and didn’t like it he would leave her out of finding more exits. 

Her eyes stopped moving and rested on an empty spot again.

“He won’t like it. He’d hurt to stop.”

There was no need to ask who she was referring to.

“Cass, he hurts you no matter what you do.”

She began to cry and buried her face in her hands.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He hurts people, it’s what he does.”

“No it’s not just him. It’s me, I’m the only one they hurt like this. I’m wrong. I don’t know why I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong Cass, it’s just...you’re not like everyone else.”

“And that’s how I’m wrong!”

“You’re not wrong. You just…”

Vexx didn’t have a good way to finish that thought. She wasn’t wrong, at least not to him, but she was something that most people just didn’t have an interest in even trying to understand. Or accept. But he didn’t have a way to say that which wouldn’t hurt her.

“I’m not what they want.”

Cass never responded well to attractive lies or empty platitudes.

“No.”

“Why can’t I just be what they want?”

“Cass…”

He wanted to reach out to her again, but he knew that making the same mistake twice here could break everything he was trying to keep while he could.

“They wouldn’t hurt me if I could just be what they want.”

Vexx sighed. He still hadn’t been sure that he could say something right, but he had to try.

“Cass, they want you to be like them. Do you even want to be like them?”

She stopped crying and turned to face him. It would be a while before he would fully appreciate it, but that was the moment he began to realize that there was something unbreakable at her core. Something he wanted. Something he envied. Something that could make the people who wanted to control her hate her. Something that could make the people too weak to resist being controlled hate her too.

Her response was final and unambiguous.

“No. I will  _ never _ be like them. I hate them.”

“Well, now that that’s cleared up, what do you want to do about it?”

Her eyes darted around the passage as she sifted through alternatives to settle on a plan.

“First, not be stupid about it. Second...”

She picked up the flyer she had dropped earlier.

“Enjoy watching Act 5 while we’re stuck living in Act 4.”

She hadn’t actually enjoyed the play very much. Most of the way back she had done nothing but vent her frustration at the ‘inexcusably illogical anachronism’ the director had caused by choosing a modern setting.

“I mean, seriously, the proximate cause of Richard III’s downfall was  _ famously, quotably _ lack of a horseshoe nail. When is the last time you’ve seen anybody on a horse?”

“What the hell is a horseshoe nail?”

“That is not the point! The point is it was an unforced error!”

“We could try and find one while we’re out, make sure you have one if anything happens.”

“The fuck am I going to do with a horseshoe nail?”

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“Ugh, Vexx, you can be impossible!”

“Yeah, but you like me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Well, I don’t hate you either.”

She might not have liked the play, but fortunately she did like other things about going out. She liked being able to choose where she would go and what she would do there. She liked being able to be anonymous, between her dislike for people and her family’s general dislike for her she was kept from or avoided, depending on who’s version of events one was listening to, the public eye so almost no one who didn’t work at the palace knew what she looked like. But mostly she liked being able to wrench her father’s, the Solar Queen’s, most of her siblings’, and all the rest of the people at the palace who wanted to force her into submission’s foot off her throat even if it was only temporary. 

She started talking about the future. He promised to take her places further away from the palace, ones they wouldn’t have to come back from. Sometimes he could almost pretend he’d be able to do that. 

_ She was supposed to be the easy mark. _

That’s why he came up with the plan in the first place. From what he had heard about her when he first started in the palace guard he had been expecting just another poor little rich girl who wouldn’t know an actual problem if it bit her in the ass. He had found something infinitely more complex. And interesting. And who meant more to him than she should. 

And who he was working to kill anyway.

The killing wasn’t about her, of course. The guard who had scoffed at the idea of anyone trying to hurt her specifically had been right, at least as far as he was talking about anyone who wasn’t related to her. She would just be collateral damage to ensure the royal line ended. 

_ At least that makes me different from the other people that hurt her. None of it is about her-it’ll be quick, and clean...and she’ll be free. _

But the rationalization and the facade it supported were getting harder to maintain. He was fast approaching the point where he would be hurting her. Specifically. Especially. Now that he had all the information he needed for the coup, he would be leaving. And despite all his promises otherwise, she wouldn’t be coming with him.

He had considered taking her with him, but the same unbreakable spark that made her unacceptable to her father would be just as unacceptable to Zovack. And as soon as Zovack realized he couldn’t control her, well, it wouldn’t be quick. Or clean. 

He wouldn’t even be able to say goodbye. She’d just ask questions that he couldn’t answer, and not just because of what would happen if he did something that could jeopardize the plan, because he wasn’t brave enough to tell her the truth.

He was trying to convince himself that he could hope she’d somehow survive what was coming. With how well she knew the passages, it was possible that she’d be able to get out even if no one else did. Hell, with how much she hated showing up to events, it was possible that she wouldn’t even be there when any of it happened. She could escape what was coming, find someone better than him to do all the things they’d talked about, that he’d promised her, that  _ he _ wanted to do with her. Or was that what he was afraid of?

But he had to admit, it wasn’t what Zovack would do in the end that worried him, it was what her father would do in the interim. The time they had been spending outside the palace, outside her father’s control, had given her a chance to grow into herself. All the things about her that intrigued and enticed him; her intelligence, her wit, her resilience, her ingenuity, her defiance; had been thrown into sharper relief. And while her father was generally more than willing to ignore her, he wasn’t willing to ignore a threat to his authority, particularly if it came from the daughter he always thought was much more trouble than she was worth,  _ particularly _ if what was happening was diminishing what he saw as her worth.

What had happened when her father was told about the blood on her dress had been worse than anything Vexx had seen his first 8 months in the palace. It wasn’t even in the top 5 worst of their interactions the past two.

And he was about to leave her here.

Vexx threw his fist into the surface in front of him. He had assumed it was a wall, but of course it wasn’t. He had been standing there reminiscing in front of the damn door he had been telling himself to walk past. And he had just knocked at it. And the music that had first attracted his attention cut out. And he couldn’t miss a chance to be with her while he still could.

He didn’t need to announce himself. He was the only one who both knocked and didn’t say who it was. When he walked into the room she was sitting on the bed, a game paused on the screen in front of her. He walked in and shut the door behind him.

Her eyes were ice green today. They seemed to change color every time Vexx saw them. She brought them to meet his, held them for a moment, then shifted them to just over his right shoulder and tilted her head.

_ Shit, I should say something. _

But he didn’t have anything he could say to her in that moment. And he had too many things he wanted to say. So he tilted his head at the same angle, shot her a cocky grin, and leaned against the wall. She clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes at the display.

“Vexx, if you don't have anything to say I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

“Can I help?”

He held his hand out for the controller.

Her eyes widened in appaul and she shifted away from him on the bed as she hid the controller behind her.

He laughed. The last time she had let him play one of her vidgames he had died almost instantly. Several times. Before loading a wrong save file and somehow erasing 30 hours of her progress. He hadn’t done it on purpose, and she knew that, but she was adamant he was never touching one of her games again after that, so asking to was one of his favorite ways of getting her attention. She knew he was just messing with her, but still, her reactions were always so...genuine.

_ Gods, I will miss her. _

“Now Princess, who says I don’t have anything to say?”

“Do you?”

“Do I have to?”

“I mean, I think you better unless you want to cop to it.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because the only times you ever DON’T have anything to say and won’t say so are when you’ve fucked something up.” 

“Are those my only options?”

“Yes. And right now I’m leaning towards fucked something up. I’m not aware of anything but I really have no idea what you get up to when I’m not around.”

He moved to sit on the bed in the space she had left when she had shifted to keep him from the controller. He was sure she didn’t suspect him of anything, she was just yanking his chain like he yanked hers.

_ She doesn’t suspect because she’d never do it herself. She’s not capable of doing something like this herself. _

Cass was a terrible liar. She just wasn’t able to keep the deception out of her continence when she tried. She had found some ways around it, telling specific versions of the truth, answering only the question literally asked when the question meant was something different, whoever had first turned her on to the idea of studying law had either made a terrible mistake or knew exactly what they were doing and Vexx wasn’t sure which unnerved him more, but outright lying, like he had been doing the entire time he’d been at the palace, just wasn’t in her ability. She was just too...real. Which was another thing people hated about her.

_ Of course even if she could lie she’d never do this. _

There were just too few people that really meant something to her for her to do something she knew would hurt one of them, unless they were hurting someone else...or had done something to make themselves meaningless.

_ Will I be meaningless? Hah, I should be meaningless. If I were a better man I’d have made sure I was meaningless by now. _

But he hadn’t. And he couldn’t. He had gotten in over his head before he even realized his feet were wet.

Cass’s discontented growl brought him back to the moment. She was leaning away from him and he had to follow her gaze to realize what was giving her pause. She was watching his hand warily. He had begun to reach out to her. While she didn’t  _ hate _ when he touched her like she did everyone else, she still didn’t particularly like it. She still found the physical contact somewhat uncomfortable but she was adamant that she wanted to try and get used to it. She was equally adamant that there were times he was under no circumstances allowed to touch her.

He tried to regain his preferred footing in their conversations and grinned at her again.

“Come on, just the hair.”

“Isn’t that one of those things they say men say when they have no intention of keeping their word?”

“I have every intention of keeping my word. I know what you’d do if I didn’t.”

“Damn fucking straight.”

He continued to reach for her but she dodged him at the last second. She was looking at him through slightly narrowed eyes with the ghost of a grin of her own.

“Hey, I thought we had a deal!”

“Not until you explain just what you’ve gone and fucked up.”

“Again, you wound me, Princess. Why do you assume I’ve fucked anything up?”

“Because you won’t just explain what you’re doing.”

“I’ll have you know I haven’t fucked anything up.”

“Really? Nothing at all?”

“Not recently. At least not yet.”

“Ah-HA. Not yet, is it?”

“Oh, come on, you’re not going to start being mad at me for stupid things I might do, now are you?”

“I mean it would cut into the time I have to devote to being mad at you for the stupid things you’ve done, but are we really talking about stupid things you  _ might _ do or stupid things you  _ will _ do?”

_ Does she know what she does to me...or is she just trying to ask if she does it? _

“If I did do something to fuck things up, would you forgive me?”

“Depends.”

“That’s it? Just ‘depends?’ Going to leave me in painful suspense?”

“Unless you actually ask any follow-up questions, yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“What if I told you I’d forgive you for that?”

“I’d say that’s nice but irrelevant.”

“How is it irrelevant?”

“Because that’s not a stupid thing I’m going to do, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing I’m going to do.”

“Ah, I see. So if the things I do are reasonable you’d forgive me?”

“Depends.”   
  


She was actually grinning now.

“Fine, Princess. Depends ON?”

“Depends on just what you did and how good an explanation you have for it. And how much you thought about it, what questions you asked, what questions you didn’t ask, the whole ‘what did you know and when did you know it,’ if you didn’t know a thing why didn’t you know a thing, what were the alternatives considered…”

“Okay, okay, I get it, it just depends.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Seriously though, Vexx, what are you here to do that you should know better than to do?”

“Can I touch the hair first?”

“No! Not until you explain!”

“Can I explain part of it and touch before I explain the rest of it?”

“Depends on how good the part of the explanation is based on the aforementioned criteria.” 

He chuckled softly.

“Is it enough that I just want to be here with you?”

She closed her eyes and winced. But she stopped leaning away from him and moved back so he could catch a lock of her hair between his fingers without moving his hand.

“Vexx, it’s not…”

“I know.”

“Even if I was sure I could…”

“I know.”

“If my father or anyone thought…”

“Cass, I know.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. She looked down at her hands and rubbed at her cuticles. He twisted the lock of her hair between her fingers. She kept her head down and glanced towards him before breaking the silence.

“So what’s the rest of it?”

“The rest of it?”

“You said that was only part of it. What’s the rest of it?”

“Why don’t you think that’s all of it?”

“Well, first, because you just told me it wasn’t. Second, because if it  _ were _ you would have said so when you came in. And…”

“And?”

“And...and  _ you’re _ the one who’s supposed to be explaining things.”

“Yeah, but now I want to know.”

“Really? We’re doing the whole ‘I tell you things, you tell me things’ routine?”

“That’s not what we were doing?”

“It could be but then you’d have to give back the hair.”

“Hmmm...but I want both.”

“And do you think you deserve both?”

“No. I probably don’t deserve either. But I still think you’re going to let me have them.”

“Why?”

“Tell you what, you finish the sentence and let me keep the hair…”

“For now.”

“For now, and I’ll tell you why and what else I know better than to do.”

“Deal. But if the other thing isn’t good I’m kicking you out.”

“You weren’t going to do that anyway?”

“Maybe, but you’ll never know now.”

“I guess I’ll just have to wonder then. But you first, Princess.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I said it first.”

She laughed.

“Okay, fine. AND, Vexx Serif, I don’t think you know better than to spend time with me.”

“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Princess. I do know better.”

He leaned to whisper into her ear.

“I just don’t care.”

She turned to him.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“The best kind. Besides, isn’t that why you agreed to the deal; you knew better but didn’t care?”

“Close, but wrong.”

“Oh? Enlighten me then.”

“I knew I was supposed to think I knew better, but given that I didn’t care I must either not, in fact, know better or I care more about doing it than that it’s wrong.”

“Well, that does make for a better compliment.”

“Who says it’s a compliment? I said I might not know better.”

“True, but I know you’re smarter than me, so if I know better, then I know you have to know better.”

“Yeah, I don’t think the transitive property works here, Vexx.”

“No idea what that is so I couldn't say. But I do care, Cass. You know that, right?”

“I…”

She looked down again and nodded. Vexx wasn’t quite sure why she had so much trouble acknowledging he cared about her. He knew it wasn’t for the reason it should be. He hoped it wasn’t for the reason he suspected, that she had her entire life surrounded by people who should have cared but didn’t, or who did care but not enough that she just couldn’t understand the concept that someone would care.

_ Do I not care enough? Or can I just not see any way out of this? Worst part is if I could just ask her about it she’d probably be able to come up with a way out in about 5 seconds… _

He laughed once at the futility of that.

“I don’t know what you’re laughing about, I should kick you out now for not being able to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“I’m going to tell you what I came in here for.”

He wasn’t. He couldn’t just say he wanted to spend time with her while he could. He couldn’t tell her he was going to be leaving, and not just because of the questions she would ask, because he couldn’t stand to see the pain he would cause her by leaving.

“That was only part of the deal. You were  _ also _ supposed to tell me why I was going to give in to both of your demands.”

“I told you why I thought you were.”

“But that wasn’t the deal. The deal was you were going to tell me why I was, not why you thought I was.”

“That’s not fair, Princess.”

“How so? Also plain so, after all, you agreed to it.”

“I only got it wrong because you’re smarter than me. You can’t hold it against me that you see so many things everyone else misses.”

“You still didn’t get it right.”

“What about if I tell you why that doesn’t matter?”

“Only if you get it right.”

“It doesn’t matter because you still want to know why I came in, and if you kick me out now, I won’t tell you.”

“Cheeky bastard.”

“But you still like me.”

“I don’t hate you. But I might if this isn’t good.”

“It’ll be good. But you have to hear me out the whole way.”

“Well that’s an auspicious start.”

“Just trust me.”

“I trust you enough to hear you out, but not to let you keep the hair while you try and spin your way out of whatever mess you’re going to make.”

She shifted away from him and twisted slightly towards the screen. She crossed her arms and the ghost of a grin was back on her face.

“Also I’m giving you a time limit. You’ve got five minutes. Impress me.”

“You’re giving me a time limit?”

“Yes, and it’s started. And incredulity isn’t impressive.”

Vexx shook his head as he considered her challenge. He had, indeed, been planning on just talking until he came up with something that could have been a justification, or they heard someone in the hallway and he would have to leave to avoid being caught. Of course she had caught on to that, stalling for time and trying to confuse the other party was a favorite trick for both of them, and not just on each other.

“You know that masquerade ball that’s coming up?”

The look she gave him at that had sent people fleeing the room. 

“Vexx, I don’t know which false premise to destroy first, that I’m the kind of person that keeps track of parties that are coming up or that I’m the kind of person that gets invited to parties that are coming up.”

“Do you want to be invited?”

“This is how you want to spend your five minutes?”

“Yes. It’s all part of my plan. Also they’re my five minutes and the only limit you had was I have to impress you. Now, do you want to be invited?”

“I don’t want to be invited for the sake of being invited, but I don’t like that I’m not invited because no one wants me there rather than because I have no interest in going.”

“I want you there.”

“I...Vexx...I don’t know even...this does not seem like a hole you’re going to get yourself out of!”

“Just hear me out.”

“For the next four minutes I’ll hear you out.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

“It better be.”

“It will be. I think you might have some fun.”

“Why would you think I might have fun at a party with my family? When have I ever had fun with my family?”

“Cass, I would never ask you to be with your family. But I do think this could be a good opportunity to have fun near your family.”

“How so?”

“How often do you feel like a princess?”

She snorted derisively.

“That’s a stupid question.”

“How is it a stupid question?”

“Last I checked I  _ am _ a princess, Vexx, ergo no matter how I feel it is inherently  _ like _ a princess as I, much to my chagrin, am always myself.”

“That’s not…”

“So unless you’re aware of a recent event that has rendered me not a princess, which let’s be honest would solve almost all my problems, it would give me new ones, but it would solve the ones I have, I inherently feel like a princess.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well then say what you mean next time.”

“What I meant was do you ever feel special?”

“‘Special’ as in that word people use when they think I don’t know what word they’re using?”

Vexx had forgotten about some of the warped definitions Cass had for things. She understood that what the words meant to her weren’t what they were supposed to mean, but she was right that a lot of the time, almost all of the time when she was around to hear it, when people were describing her as ‘special’ they didn’t mean it in a good way. And just like she had never really been special in a good way, she had never been loved in a good way. ‘Your father’s only doing that because he loves you.’ ‘I love you, Cassandra, but you make it so hard most of the time.’ ‘Dad wasn’t mad about the dress, he was just worried that you had hurt yourself because he loves you.’ ‘Cassandra if I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be trying so hard to try and help you.’ That last one the Solar Queen used just about every time she spoke to Cass was particularly disturbing to Vexx because he could imagine himself saying something similar if he ever had to tell her the entire truth. He did love her and he was trying to help her, but the best he could do to actually do that was shit in the long run. He couldn’t protect her from her father, or her family, or Zovack, or even himself. He could just distract her for a bit to let her actually live while she could.

“No, Cass. ‘Special’ like you’re the most important person in the system.”

She brought her knees to her chest and leaned into them as she wrapped herself around them.

“No. I don’t think so. Not really.”

“Do you want to?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Who am I important to. And why do they...why does he think I’m important.”

“Cass, I’ve told you why you’re important.”

“I know. I just...I don’t understand, Vexx.”

“It’s fine. You don’t have to.”

“Shouldn’t have to be fine…”

Cass was even more merciless with herself than even her father and the Solar Queen when she thought one of her shortcomings was somehow illegitimate. Vexx might not be able to do anything to stop them from tearing at her psyche, but he wasn’t about to sit there and watch as she did it to herself.

“Cass, it’s up to me and I said it was fine.”

It wasn’t totally fine with him. But Cass wasn’t the reason she had such a hard time understanding. It was probably mostly her father, and the Solar Queen, and most of the rest of the royal family, and all the rest of the people who made sure Cassandra wouldn’t be able to forget everything they wanted her to be or thought she was supposed to be and wasn’t to keep her from seeing what she was. But a tiny part of him thought, or was afraid, he might be the reason she couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. People and deception weren’t particular fortes of hers, she didn’t care for either, but she was brilliant. And perceptive. And had quite a knack for putting a bunch of seemingly unimportant and random pieces together into a coherent whole. It was possible that on some level she suspected something, and that was why she couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t blame her for that, and not just because it would have made it his fault. Because he didn’t understand how he could love her and be planning her murder at the same time either.

“Fine. I suppose, technically, as the aggrieved party I should cede to your opinion on the matter. But ceding,  _ arguendo _ , the issue of my own desire to feel that way, seriously the hell do you think I would feel that way at a dance?”

Vexx had no idea what she was talking about with the ‘arguendo’ but he figured he’d have to explain the dance at some point.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“Meaning you were trying to stall for time to come up with a coherent explanation.”

“I’ll have you know my explanation is positively cogent.”

“Define ‘cogent.’”

“Impressive?”

“Yeah, no. Not that.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to waste my five minutes, would you?”

“Two minutes.”

“You should come to the dance because it would be the last place anyone would look for you. Like that story with that detective with the hat and the pipe and the stolen letter.”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead as her hands covered her face.

“Vexx, you have just conflated Sherlock Holmes with Auguste Dupin while summarizing ‘The  _ Purloined _ Letter’ so wrong it was backwards! ‘The Purloined Letter’ posits that the best place to hide something is where everyone would look for it because it’s right under their noses.”

“And you’d be where everyone could see you.”

“No. You do not get credit for that. It was too wrong.”

“Impressively wrong?”

He had her with that one. 

“I...you...seriously...fine. I said you had to impress me, I didn’t say how.”

He grinned at her.

“So you’ll come?”

“No. Not yet. I said you had five minutes to impress me, I didn’t say what happened if you did.”

She had him with that one.

“Devious, Princess.”

“But seeing as you did impress me in the time limit, by being wrong, lest you forgot, I’ll finish hearing you out. And if it’s good, I’ll go. With caveats.”

“What caveats?”

“The usual. If I don’t like it, I’m leaving; I leave, you don’t bring it up again; if my father or anyone else catches on it’s off; anyone tells me to smile I rip their face off…”

“Why do you think I picked a masquerade ball? Just wear a smiling mask.”

“You picked a masquerade ball because it was fucking available. And that’s not a reason I should go.”

“I told you why you should go, because no one would expect you to.”

“Vexx, no one would expect me to because I hate the things it is.”

“True, but if no one would expect you to go, they won’t be looking, so you don’t have to worry about being found. Think about it Cass, you could have some fun, be yourself, we could be together and you wouldn’t have to spend every second worried about someone using it against you because they won’t know it’s you. You and I would be the only ones who’d know it was you, to everyone else, you’d be just another guest at the ball.”

“Vexx, I...that sounds nice, but it can’t be that way. My family might only pay enough attention to me to know they hate me, but a mask isn’t enough to stop them recognizing me.”

“Cass, you don’t need the mask to not be recognized. I’ve seen it, when you don’t have to worry that everything you do or don’t say, or do, or think is going to be used against you, Cass, you  _ shine _ . And they refuse to see you as capable of that, so there’s no way they would even suspect it would be you.”

She was still hesitating. She had good reason to be concerned about what her father would do if he did think she was there, but even if she was recognized, as long as she could be where she was supposed to be by the time anyone looked, which wouldn’t be a problem given her knowledge of the passages, it could be chalked up to just a case of mistaken identity. Her father would rather believe that she spent the night too afraid to even consider disobeying him than even acknowledge the possibility that she could function as an independent woman.

“Cass, I swear, if I thought doing this was going to put you in any more danger than you’re already in, that I’m sorry I can’t save you from, or that it would just end up hurting you more, I wouldn’t suggest it. I don’t want to see you get hurt if there’s a way around it.”

He meant that. He always meant that. Whatever else he may be lying to her about, he’d never try to make her do something that he thought would make things more dangerous or painful for her. He just wasn’t always right about it. And it didn’t change the fact that just because what he was doing wasn’t making things worse it didn’t mean he was helping them get any better. Or the fact that “less” was a poor substitute for “not.” Or that he was part of the danger and hurt she was in. Or that just because he couldn’t see a way around it didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Or that the person who could probably find one was the person he wasn’t brave enough to be honest with.

“Vexx, there are a lot of ways this could go wrong…”

“I have some of that covered.”

She gave an exasperated sigh.

“Some?!”

“We can go in with the stragglers. There’ll be a lot of people in uniform so I can just wear that.”

“And I’m supposed to wear?”

“Princess, we both know that if I tried to tell you what to wear you’d never speak to me again.”

“Ordinarily yes, but in the immediate conversation not helpful!”

“You’re a scrapper when you want to be, I’m sure you can think of something.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Who says you have to wear anything?”

“Me. I say that.”

“Then it sounds like you’re going to think of something.”

“I didn’t say I was going.”

“True. But you didn’t say you weren’t. And I think that even if you think you should know better, you care too much not to.”

“This is why I hate telling people things, it always comes back to haunt me.”

Vexx chuckled and looked away from her at that. It fit with the normal ebb and flow of their conversations, but rather than being satisfied with himself for being able to force her to concede a point which she would take it as, he just couldn’t bear to look at her when he knew how many of the things she had told him  _ would _ come back to haunt her. And not just in the meaningless games they played.

“Honestly, Princess, I think I should be more concerned about you haunting me.”

“Why would I haunt you, Vexx?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure if you don’t have a good time at the dance you’re going to be very mad at me.”

“True, that does sound like me. So I guess you should work really hard to make sure I DO have a good time at the dance.”


End file.
